


Strangeness & Charm

by sweetfayetanner



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Halloween, Hawthorne Era Michael, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetfayetanner/pseuds/sweetfayetanner
Summary: She’s never met a Hawthorne boy…until one of them comes to her rescue on Halloween.





	Strangeness & Charm

**Author's Note:**

> Pure fluff featuring Michael in that amazing Hawthorne uniform, because this season keeps giving and I couldn't resist. 
> 
> There's an almost assault in this with some predatory guys; nothing at all explicit and it doesn't ever get to that point, but I'm putting the warning here anyway just to let everyone know before they read.

Coming here had been a mistake.

A thunderous bassline rattled inside her ribcage, the lyrics drowned out by the beat. She lingered by the table of refreshments, dodging stray elbows and keeping a mental tally of how many versions of sexy beloved childhood characters crossed into her path. There wasn’t a single person here that she knew, at least not directly. The house—a sprawling mansion full of white marble and high ceilings and far too many sculptures—belonged to someone in her parents’ social circle, and she was supposed to stop by for some bullshit reason. It hadn’t been her idea of a good time on her favorite night of the year. Far from it, actually. It wasn’t like she had plans, anyway, now that all of her friends were miles and miles across the country. But there was no way in hell she’d be making any new ones here.

She hadn’t been motivated enough to dress up, either, and this California weather was not kind to layers. She’d seriously misjudged the flannel button down now that she was gridlocked in a sea of humanity buzzed on alcoholic punch. There had been more alcohol than punch, she found out early on, once she’d tossed back two of those small glasses. She’d been here just over an hour, but it felt like an eternity. Was it socially acceptable to nope the fuck out of this place yet?

The refreshments spread was impressive—she had to give them that at least. It had been the only reason she’d hung around so long, shoveling Halloween cookies and candied apples into the bag draped over her shoulder in the least discreet manner possible. If she had to endure her own personal slice of hell, then she should’ve gotten something out of it. It was only fair to take advantage of free food.

She dropped a handful of assorted fun sized candy bars into her bag, well aware of the unsolicited leering gazes across the room. A trio of fuckboys had been eyeing her since she walked in. She was someone new, someone unknown, so of course they had to sniff her out like prey. That look was universal no matter what coast you lived on, and she wasn’t here for it.

Elbows and shoulders jostled her as she merged into the traffic of mostly costumed bodies. They followed behind, thinking she didn’t notice.

She did.

She hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and continued toward where she thought the front door had been, though this house was laid out like a maze. She attempted to use the crowd as a buffer, but it thinned out faster than she’d anticipated. The hot, sweaty presence of them hovering behind her was too close, too much. Their expensive cologne choked her senses and mingled with whatever combination of booze had been in the punch. She veered down a hall, intending to take off at a brisk walk when a strong hand latched onto her wrist.

“Where’re you going, sweetheart?”

They stalked her, surrounding her, boxing her into a corner. She struggled against the iron grip around her wrist and tried to kick at their shins. If only she could’ve bashed them across the face with her bag full of candied apples and Halloween chocolate when she had the chance.

“Fuck off.”

“Aww, come on—”

“ _Let her go_.”

The steely command filled up the hall as if a layer of ice had suddenly formed on the lavish end tables and lamps and portrait frames. For a moment, the predatory trio relented, and she turned her head to find who the voice belonged to.

A Hawthorne boy. It had to be.

Tall, yet leaner than the trio of dumbasses holding her hostage, he managed to somehow appear more intimidating than the three of them combined. He wore a tailored black suit paired with a crisp white shirt, a thin, glossy black bow tied around his neck. Definitely a uniform, she mused absently, while she gaped at him in something akin to astonishment. He had the most impressive head of strawberry blond hair she’d ever seen.

Slender fingers clenched into fists at his sides and his jaw tightened. She’d heard stories about the boys who went to Hawthorne from her own classmates; they were often spoken about in conspiratorial whispers like they were eldritch beings, the stuff of myth and legend.

Maybe they were.

“Yeah?” one of the trio taunted. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” His fingers pressed deeper into her skin and she imagined a handprint-shaped bruise around her wrist like some macabre bracelet.

“Get your hands off her,” the Hawthorne boy demanded. His voice was even, but she saw the impatience, the anger building in his tone. “I won’t tell you again.”

They laughed. They kept laughing—his nails digging into her skin until her fingers went numb—and she was the only one who caught the smirk that passed over the boy’s lips before they all heard a sickening _crack_. He dropped her wrist with a cry of agony, holding up a hand full of twisted, mangled fingers. His blood pattered onto the expensive carpet beneath their feet, the white bones that protruded from his broken skin shining in the glow of the orange Halloween lights.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

“What the fuck, man?”

The two uninjured assailants rounded on the Hawthorne boy while their friend stood there, sobbing and uselessly clutching his obliterated hand to his chest. She watched the growing stain of red across his shirt and pooling around his shoes with more satisfaction than she was willing to admit.

“The hell did you do to him, freak?”

He’d barely taken two steps toward the Hawthorne boy when he flew up into the air and careened onto the floor on the opposite end of the hallway, attracting a chorus of screams and horrified looks and dropped cups of punch. She saw the boy’s fingers flex, his knuckles white as he confronted the third attacker. The one who’d been bleeding had finally fled the scene, leaving a trail of blood behind.

“Don’t,” her would-be assailant pleaded with wide eyes. “Please, I didn’t—”

Hawthorne boy tilted his head. “It’s far too late for that now.”

The third attacker flew into the opposite wall, pressed flat against the mahogany paneling as if someone had their hands around his throat. His hands seemed to be restrained by some unseen force, his feet dangling a few inches from the ground. He sputtered and gurgled trying to take in a breath, all attempts to force out a single, desperate syllable made in vain. She watched the veins pop out of his forehead and neck, his face veering from a gross shade of beet red to a bruised purple.

Hawthorne boy seemed unconcerned—and really, neither was she—but the attention they’d garnered had gotten out of hand, quickly. And then she saw it: she swore Hawthorne boy’s eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed like he was having some kind of seizure. Blood started to drip from his nostrils.

“Whoa…whoa, easy,” she said, very aware of the shouting and bodies moving around them as she surged forward and grabbed the front of Hawthorne boy’s sweater vest. “Come on, we have to get out of here. Like, now.”

She bulldozed through the crowd to the front door, her fist still curled around his sweater despite the fact that he was a good several inches taller than her. She didn’t even know if he was coherent at this point, she just knew they needed to disappear fast before someone got wise and called the cops on him. She moved like nothing else around them existed, tuning out the whispers and yells until the cool evening air finally hit her in the face.

It was dusk outside. Night encroached on the horizon, orange and purple lights winking to life on the houses they passed. The sidewalks had become flooded with kids in costume. She could breathe when they were at least a block away from the house, and finally let go of Hawthorne boy’s formerly pristine sweater vest after another block. When she turned on her heel, he was blinking slowly, taking shallow breaths while he stared down at the blood on his fingers.

“Are you okay?” she asked, though it sounded pointless after it left her mouth. Of course he wasn’t okay—he was trembling, there was blood all down the front of his starched white shirt, and the terror on his face made something twist uncomfortably in her chest.

“Here, sit down. Careful…deep breaths, that’s it.” He sunk down onto the stone wall of the house they’d stopped in front of. She joined him, cautious of the carved pumpkins that flickered with candlelight to her left.

“There’s too much of it, sometimes,” he said. She could still hear the tremble in his voice, all traces of anger and mischief gone. “I get lost in it. I…don’t even notice until it’s almost too late.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about, but whatever trance he’d been in had looked scary as fuck. She dug around in her bag until she uncovered a few napkins pilfered from the refreshments table. It seemed like the blood flow had stopped, but it’d made a mess of his face and the front of his clothes. There wasn’t much she could do about the uniform. But she pressed the napkin to his nose, gingerly, then wiped up the trails of crimson that had dripped down his lips and chin. He had a jawline for days and crystalline blue eyes that made the breath in her throat catch just a little.

“Thank you,” he murmured, taking the bloodstained napkins and tucking them away into the pocket of his jacket. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You saved me from those creeps. It was the least I could do,” she answered. “Actually…” She pulled open her bag again, settling it between them. “I _do_ have a lot of stolen chocolate in here, and there’s no way I’m going to eat it all myself. Do you like candied apples? ‘Cause I took like five of them.”

He laughed, and so did she, because he had the kind of infectious, charming laughter that made her insides turn into complete mush. He unearthed a KitKat bar from the depths of her bag and she tore open a Reese’s peanut butter cup. She couldn’t stop staring at his long, slender fingers and the candlelight that spun his hair into gold.

She was sitting here on Halloween night casually eating stolen chocolate with a Hawthorne boy. What the hell kind of luck had the universe thrown her way?

“I thought all of those stories about you Hawthorne boys were bullshit,” she confessed as the empty wrappers began to pile up between them. “But I’m new here, so what the hell do I know, right?”

He folded one leg underneath him on the stone wall, the other left over the side. She’d settled cross-legged, the wrappers drifting down into her lap.

“Well, I’m Michael,” he said. He flashed a megawatt smile, and it took her a second to register the cheesy albeit adorable joke. “And I don’t know what you’ve heard about Hawthorne but I can guarantee at least half of it is bullshit.”

She laughed. “Yeah, maybe,” she agreed. “But what I saw…what you did…I’m impressed with whatever that was. You’ve made me a believer.”

Michael ripped open another KitKat and shied away from her confession. “Where’d you move from?”

“New York,” she answered. “Y’know, where autumn actually exists and the leaves change color like they’re supposed to.”

“You miss it.”

“You have no idea,” she said.  

Michael hopped down from the wall and brushed off his pants. After shoving the discarded chocolate wrappers into his pocket, he held out one of his hands to her. She pushed the wrappers in her lap back into her bag and took Michael’s hand, letting him help her off the wall. His skin was warm and soft when he laced his fingers between hers.  

He smirked. “Come with me.”

They walked for several blocks, weaving in between bands of costumed kids and dogs. Houses were strung up with lights and fake cobwebs, lawns inundated with artificial fog and tacky decorations. Her eyes wandered to the Jack O’Lanterns displayed on almost every porch and front yard, from the simple, toothy grins to the intricate, pop culture-inspired works of art. High-pitched shrieks pierced the air from somewhere a couple blocks away; across the street, there was the rush of children’s quick footsteps. For a moment, if she closed her eyes, she could conjure the rich scent of wood smoke and damp leaves.

Michael led her into a small wooded park through an elegant wrought iron entranceway. They passed circles of teenagers and kids gathered on the grass trading their trick-or-treat spoils and looking for mischief.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

The two of them moved away from the crowds to a quiet little corner where Michael relinquished her hand. She watched him, one eyebrow raised, as he circled a massive tree. He considered it like the tree itself was some kind of challenge, until he stopped and took a deep breath. Michael lifted one arm, then the other, his palms splayed upward to face the network of branches, his movements fluid and graceful.

She only took her eyes off him when she realized the leaves were beginning to fade from their bright verdant color to a golden yellow. One of them floated off the branches and curled into her palm. She studied it, her mouth dropping open as it turned again, this time toward a burnt orange hue. The rest of the leaves followed, dissolving and changing before her very eyes, from gold to dark orange and every shade in between until the tree became a brilliant display of scarlet.

She laughed, twirling under the shelter of the branches while they let go of their leaves, a crimson storm swirling around her. She felt them land on her head, and gathered them up into her arms just to toss them into the breeze again. Her boots crunched through the piles when they accumulated around the tree trunk; for just a moment, she was a kid in her backyard in New York.

Once the last one had fallen, she dove face-first into the most gigantic pile of bright red leaves she’d seen in months. Their rich, earthy fragrance filled up her senses, and she flopped onto her back cocooned by them, feeling blissfully content. Michael towered over her, that ever-present smirk lighting up his face.

She tugged on his pant leg. “Come on,” she beckoned. “Join me—it’s fun.”

Michael toppled backward into the leaves and landed next to her, his hair slightly tousled from the fall. He had a few leaves stuck in those golden curls, another one edging toward the collar of his shirt. His arm brushed hers, his fingers instantly seeking hers out until they were laced together again. She moved closer, the leaves crackling and crunching under her, and rested her head on his shoulder.

She breathed in deep. “So this is what they teach at Hawthorne.”

“…Some of it.”

She was comfortable—way too comfortable. If they stayed here like this all night, she wouldn’t argue. Would he?

“I have to say, I’m jealous.” She let her eyes close. “Thank you…that was the sweetest thing anyone’s done for me since I moved here.”

His thumb brushed across the back of her hand. “It was worth it, to see the look on your face.”

“Hey, Langdon,” a new voice hollered from somewhere behind them. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

Michael sat up and she followed, craning her neck to find a small group of Hawthorne boys in their crisp black and white uniforms. She plucked a couple of leaves out of Michael’s hair, then traced the curve of his cheek with her fingertips.

“I have to go,” he told her. “I’m sorry.”

 _Fuck it_ , she thought, before she pressed her lips to his. It was a tentative kiss and far too chaste; she wasn’t sure if she’d miscalculated his feelings. But when she started to pull away, he drew her back to him, his fingers tipping her chin upward. He kissed her deeply, both of them ignoring the howls from his friends until they broke apart, desperate to catch their breath.

Michael left another kiss on her forehead, soft and lingering and delicate.

“See you around, Hawthorne boy.”

He gave her one last grin, and then he was gone, back to his group of mysterious, ethereal friends, back to his strange school of myth and legend, nothing but a silhouette fading into the shadows of this surreal Halloween night.


End file.
